51st Festival of KNE-Odigitis:: BRIEFING BY THE GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE CC OF THE KKE WITH COMMUNIST YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS PARTICIPATING IN THE 51st FESTIVAL OF KNE–ODIGITIS

We would like to welcome you to Athens, Greece and the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece, in the context of the 51st Festival of KNE–“Odigitis”.

At a time when:

- The murderous state of Israel is trying to deliver the final blow to the Palestinian people through its atrocities;

- The war in Ukraine threatens to set Europe ablaze;

- There are more than fifty active hotbeds of war around the globe;

- We are witnessing the imperialist camps haggling hard and preparing for war;

The festival of KNE–“Odigitis” is turning into a vast demonstration expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people, denouncing imperialist wars and our country’s involvement in them, and highlighting the only way out for the peoples. As its slogan reads, “We overthrow the old, forging the path to the new. Socialism – for justice to prevail!”.

We place great importance on our internationalist solidarity, cooperation, the power of proletarian internationalism, friendship, and the
common struggles of our peoples.

Thirty-five years after the counter-revolutionary overthrows, the balance of power worldwide remains unfavourable to the class-oriented forces, despite the problems of capitalism and the intensification of its contradictions. Capitalist power has managed to co-opt not only sections of the working class, the labour–trade union movement, and the popular middle strata, but also Communist Parties. However, developments themselves increasingly point to a system that is outdated, decayed, and now historically obsolete.

In the past years, the gap between the wealth concentrated in monopoly groups and the relative and absolute poverty experienced by the vast majority of workers has grown.

Instead of being used to fully meet expanding social needs, new technological capabilities, digital transformation, and artificial intelligence are used by capital to increase profitability and the concentration of capital, increase the degree of exploitation, and suppress and manipulate the working class and the people in general. Their capitalist exploitation leads to the intensification of the contradictions of the capitalist system itself.

The intensification of the trend towards relative and absolute impoverishment and long-term unemployment, coupled with the failure to utilize modern scientific and technological capabilities to safeguard the health of the people, fulfil their educational needs, and protect the environment, underscore the intensification of the fundamental contradiction between capital and labour and, more broadly, of all social contradictions within the capitalist system.

Compared to the long-term average for the period 2000–2019, the slowdown in the international economy over the last three years highlights the large amount of over-accumulated capital that cannot be recapitalized or invested to ensure a satisfactory rate of profit.

The recession in the Eurozone economy, particularly in Germany, but also in Japan in Asia, and the marginal slowdown in the US, are characteristic aspects of the real situation of the international capitalist economy.

The over-accumulation of capital and the manifestation of the crisis are periodically created by the normal functioning of the capitalist economy. This is not a deviation from it, as bourgeois analyses would have us believe. Rather, it arises from the contradiction that exists at the core of the functioning of the capitalist system in the production sphere.

The previous period also proved, once again, that no proposal for bourgeois management —whether Keynesian or neo-liberal, expansionary or restrictive fiscal and monetary policy— can override the laws of capitalist production, the contradiction between the social character of production and the capitalist appropriation of its results, which is the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist mode of production and the main cause of its economic crises.

All management formulas were tried, confirming once more that they only temporarily mitigate contradictions; they cannot address the growing contradictions inherent in the capitalist system.

In this context, and given the sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions, there has been a shift towards a war economy and preparations for a large-scale imperialist war. The aim is twofold: on the one hand, to postpone the onset of the next major capitalist crisis through investment in the war economy; and, on the other hand, to create the conditions for a relatively controlled, large-scale devaluation and destruction of capital in the various hotbeds of war.

This shift is accompanied by an increase in the degree of the exploitation of workers, reduced social policy spending, and intensified authoritarianism and repression in all imperialist centres. Once again, it is clear that there is no crime that big capital will hesitate to commit in order to preserve its power and increase its profits. For the same reasons that it is escalating its attack on workers’ incomes and rights during this period of imperialist peace, it is planning to drag the peoples into war.

All these developments confirm that capitalism is a historically outdated system.
They highlight that the only progressive way out for our times is the revolutionary transition to socialism–communism.

Today, uneven development itself is playing a role in changing the correlation of forces and is sharpening the contradictions between imperialist alliances, within current alliances, and in the intra-bourgeois contradictions in capitalist states.

Competition between imperialist powers for control of mineral wealth, energy resources, fertile land, water resources, energy and commodity transport routes, geopolitical footholds and market shares has caused two regional imperialist wars, one in Ukraine and one in the Middle East, in which a large number of capitalist states around the world are involved in one way or another.

In addition, there are dozens of flashpoints on all continents, where people are shedding their blood for the interests of monopolies and the bourgeois classes. Imperialist alliances are forming and realigning, and contradictions within them are intensifying.

A key element of the struggle at the international level is the challenge to the supremacy of the USA and the NATO–EU bloc of forces in the international imperialist system. Opposite the Euro-Atlantic alliance stands the Eurasian alliance under formation, with China as its main force, challenging the USA for supremacy in the international imperialist system, and Russia, which remains the second strongest military power. The USA, which still holds the leading position, is trying to halt the balance of power shifting in China’s favour. International financial institutions have already downgraded the credit rating of the USA.

In this context, the new Trump administration is significantly strengthening the protectionist measures introduced by previous US administrations, increasing trade tariffs and threatening to escalate the trade war, even against allies in the Euro-Atlantic camp. It is abandoning its international commitments to the “green transition” and intensifying the extraction of hydrocarbons. It is facilitating a relative devaluation of the dollar to boost US exports, putting pressure on China and preventing the expansion of its influence, while strengthening the flow of capital to the USA.

It is trying to reduce China’s influence within the emerging BRICS alliance by holding special talks and negotiations with Russia and India. It is also trying to weaken China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, which strengthens its economic ties with countries in Asia and Europe. US policy is sharpening contradictions within the Euro-Atlantic camp and causing a deterioration in relations between the USA and the EU, Canada and Australia. It is also exacerbating intra-bourgeois contradictions within the US, which are also reflected in the processes within the bourgeois political system. It is increasing the likelihood of the dollar declining as an international currency. It has a negative impact on international trade and reinforces the downward trend in the international capitalist economy.

At the same time, China is taking a series of measures to counter the pressure of US protectionist policies.

The sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions could widen existing cracks in the Euro-Atlantic axis in the coming years. There are already significant differences, and opinions are increasingly diverging on the stance towards the war in Ukraine, and, more broadly, on Russia, China, trade tariffs, military spending and the “green transition”. The EU is losing ground and its position in international competition with the USA and China is deteriorating.

In this context, diplomatic means are becoming increasingly irrelevant for bourgeois states, with trade and economic wars, as well as military preparations, taking priority. There is a general trend towards a so-called “war economy”.

The eurozone economy has been relatively stagnant over the past three years, with a growth rate of no more than 0.5%. The most optimistic forecasts suggest that it could reach 1.1% in 2025. The EU has become less competitive relative to the USA and China for a number of reasons, including higher energy costs, lagging behind in digital transformation, artificial intelligence and new technologies in general, its greater degree of outward-looking policy, which makes it more vulnerable to trade wars, and its high dependence on imports of critical raw materials.

This situation exacerbates inter-bourgeois contradictions within and between EU member states (e.g., France, Germany and the Netherlands) due to the objective differences in their fiscal situations, the different consequences of the green transition and the shift to a war economy, responses to migration, and, more generally, the impact of uneven capitalist development. Nine EU member states have already breached its fiscal rules (e.g., France, Italy and Belgium).

The differences concern the attitude towards Trump’s policies as well as towards Russia and China (e.g. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland).

In any case, the EU is heading towards a further reactionary turn. The implementation of EU guidelines requires an escalation of the attack on people’s incomes and rights, the extension of flexible labour relations and retirement age limits, new cuts in social policy spending (e.g. health), and an increase in the relative and absolute impoverishment of workers.

At the same time, the leadership of the EU and the European Central Bank is promoting the escalation of the trade war with the USA as an opportunity to speed up efforts to secure the EU’s “strategic autonomy”. More specifically, the EU is attempting to strengthen the euro’s position as an international currency, reverse the flow of capital (from the USA to the EU), and expand its international alliances.

This provides the context for the shift towards a war economy and the strengthening of the EU’s military forces.

Of course, the shift to a war economy is contradictory. Given the EU’s stance on inter-imperialist conflicts and the fact that the overwhelming majority of its member states are also NATO members (with the exceptions of Ireland, Cyprus, and Malta), this leads to the purchase of US weapons systems and the strengthening of the US war industry. At the same time, this shift is exacerbating contradictions over the new distribution of EU funds (e.g. for the agricultural sector and the green transition), and types of financing (e.g. forms of joint borrowing).

As you are surely aware, our Party was quick to highlight the imperialist nature of the war in Ukraine on the part of both sides. It noted that the Ukrainian people are paying the price for the competition and interventions of NATO and the EU on the one hand, which support the Zelenskiy government, and capitalist Russia on the other.

This is the culmination of a process that began with the overthrow of socialism and has intensified over the last 10 years, following the events in Maidan Square. These events were supported by part of the Ukrainian bourgeois forces, as well as by the EU, NATO, and other capitalist states, and led to the coup d'état against the Ukrainian government and attacks against communists, the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine, and the banning of all political parties that do not support Ukraine’s accession to NATO and the EU.

The KKE informed the Greek people that we are sitting on a powder keg.

It highlighted the responsibilities of the bourgeois classes of all the forces involved, rejecting their pretexts and addressing the anti-communist and anti-Soviet distortion of history that both sides were guilty of. It stressed the need for the peoples to struggle together and clashed with Greece’s multifaceted involvement in the war, for which the New Democracy government and all the Euro-Atlantic parties are responsible.

In the three-and-a-half years of this war, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have lost their lives, mainly young people of the working class and the poor popular strata. Approximately 25 million people have fled their homes. Homes and public infrastructure have been destroyed on an enormous scale. Amidst the ruins, capitalist states and monopolies are competing with each other for the “reconstruction” of Ukraine, which they see as an “investment opportunity”. This will cost hundreds of billions of euros which the people will pay dearly for.

The triggering of contradictions and realignments within imperialist alliances based on the development of imperialist conflict and competition is not a paradoxical or unprecedented phenomenon, but a common feature of imperialist wars. This can result in former enemies becoming allies, and vice versa.

Whether the war continues or a temporary “peaceful” settlement is achieved, the causes of the conflict remain. The risk of escalation and generalization looms, as do the conditions for major humanitarian and environmental disaster. Forces are clashing using increasingly modern, state-of-the-art weapons with greater range, even in battles fought near nuclear power plants. The risk of nuclear disaster is also heightened by the fact that Russia, as well as NATO and EU member states involved on the side of Ukraine (e.g. the US, the United Kingdom and France) are among the world’s most powerful nuclear powers.

At the same time, the Israeli war machine supported by the US and the EU, launched a massive operation in the Gaza Strip, using the Hamas attack as a pretext. This operation killed and injured tens of thousands of innocent people, including unarmed people, young children, women, and elderly people.

Our Party has consistently stood by the Palestinian people, organizing large demonstrations and demanding the recognition of the Palestinian state within the borders that existed prior to June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital. We have fought decisive battles in the ideological confrontation under the pretext of combatting “terrorism” or Israel’s right to “self-defence” and other arguments invoked by the dominant bourgeois propaganda, supported by the government and other bourgeois parties, and those who support the emerging Eurasian imperialist axis.

We denounced and opposed the Greek government’s refusal to implement the unanimous 2015 decision of the Greek parliament to recognize the Palestinian state, as well as its "whitewashing" of Israel’s crimes. This strategy is in line with that of the country’s bourgeoisie, who have charted a course of economic, political and military cooperation with Israel under all right-wing, centre and left-wing governments (under the leadership of Prime Ministers Papandreou, Samaras, Tsipras and Mitsotakis).

Strengthening solidarity with peoples fighting against the imperialist plans of the US and NATO, such as the Palestinian people, is also a matter of ideological–political importance.

Nothing can invalidate the just struggle of the Palestinian people and other peoples in the region, who are resisting and fighting against foreign occupation and other imperialist plans. Through this struggle, they can create the conditions necessary to free themselves once and for all from the system of exploitation and war.

It is a matter of internationalist solidarity to defend the struggle and the right of the Palestinians to obtain their own homeland, which requires us to challenge the accusations of “terrorism” and “terrorists” levelled by the US, NATO, and Israel, as well as the ideological construct that equates any criticism of the state of Israel with anti-Semitism.

In addition to the Palestinian territories, Israel occupies parts of Lebanon and Syria. Among other things, this gives it control over a significant proportion of the region’s water resources, which it can exploit for its own benefit.

Its aim is to impose a broader plan on the region, either through economic agreements like the “Abraham Accords” or by military aggression, in order to establish Israel as a key power throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region, in line with the objectives of the Israeli bourgeoisie and the interests of the US.

The US continues to exert strong influence by supporting Israel and the Gulf monarchies in resolving both the Israel–Turkey conflict in Syria and the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme, while also taking advantage of the Kurdish issue to serve its own goals.

All these facts demonstrate that the region remains mired in imperialist rivalries and that conditions are being created for a further escalation of the war in the Middle East and beyond.

Relatively close to our country, two armed civil conflicts are raging in Libya and Sudan. These conflicts have claimed tens of thousands of lives and made life unimaginably difficult for millions more.

As demonstrated by Trump’s actions against Canada, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, no region is immune to the fierce competition.

Furthermore, the contradictions between the bourgeois classes in the Balkans and the Caucasus are intensifying due to the involvement of more powerful imperialist states, which could lead to bloodshed among the peoples.

In order to serve the needs and interests of European monopolies in international capitalist competition, and to enhance its position in the imperialist system, the EU cooperates with NATO and the USA. However, it also engages in imperialist wars and interventions independently.

The EU is establishing military and non-military missions and operations in many regions across the globe. A key feature of this period is the shift of the European capitalist economy towards a war economy and the strengthening of the war industry within this framework.

In this difficult and complex situation, our Party supports the Communist Parties with which we cooperate by spreading its positions on imperialist war and other crucial issues. This is intended to open a discussion within the Communist Parties and Communist Youth Organizations.

In addition to the parties with which we cooperate closely, we maintain good relations with Communist parties on all continents and follow their elaborations, as they follow ours.

We believe that it is necessary to:

- Strengthen our internationalist solidarity against imperialist aggression, repression, and anti-communism, with methodical support for initiatives and workers’–people’s struggles to overcome the problems faced by the Communist Parties, trade unions, workers’ and people’s forces.

- Safeguard and strengthen cooperation with Communist Parties that are concerned about the situation in the communist movement.

We believe that closer cooperation is needed with Communist Parties that:

- Defend Marxism–Leninism and proletarian internationalism, the need to form a communist pole at an international level.

- Fight against opportunism and reformism, reject the centre-left or any kind of bourgeois management of capitalism, and participation in or support of bourgeois anti-popular governments.

- Defend the scientific laws of the socialist revolution, based on which they assess the course of socialist construction and seek to research and draw lessons from the problems and mistakes of the first attempt at socialist construction in the 20th century.

- Condemn the imperialist war and highlight the responsibilities of the bourgeois classes on both sides. Have a clear ideological front against erroneous views about imperialism, especially those that detach military aggression from the economic content of imperialism. Oppose any imperialist alliance. Refuse to take sides in the imperialist conflict.

- Establish ties with the working class, are active in the trade union movement and the movement of the popular sections of the middle strata, seeking to integrate the daily struggle for workers’ and people’s rights into a contemporary revolutionary strategy for workers’–people’s power, for socialism.

- Do not detach anti-war and anti-fascist struggle from the struggle against capitalism, which gives rise to war and fascism. Reject the phony “anti-fascism” and the various “anti-fascist fronts” used by bourgeois and opportunist forces to entrap the peoples in their plans.

Dear comrades,

The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of Greece is approaching. Next week, the Theses of the Central Committee of the Party will be made public for inter-party and public debate. The Congress will take place at the end of January 2026.

The main theme of the 22nd Congress is the Party itself. The Party must fully harmonize its entire functioning and state of forces with its revolutionary programme and statutes at a faster and more effective pace. It must be a truly 'all-weather party', ready for anything, not just in words or as a general goal, but in deeds, reflected in its daily actions and contribution, raising the consciousness of working people and guiding our people’s struggle for socialism.

In recent years, remarkable steps have been taken in the development of the Party. Over the last five years, there has been a major shift in the correlation of forces in favour of the class forces, the Party forces in all mass movements and mass organizations.

There have been successes in the labour – trade union movement, where we are now in second place nationwide with about 30%, while hundreds of first-level trade unions, federations, and labour centres are in the hands of communists.

The list supported by KNE in the university students’ elections took first place, with 36% of the vote.

We also came first in the primary and secondary school teachers’ elections.

The communists also hold a majority in both the Federation of Hospital Doctors of Greece and the Union of Hospital Doctors of Athens and Attica.

In the June 2023 parliamentary elections, the KKE won 7.7% of the vote, up from 5.5%, and elected 21 members to the Greek parliament.

In the June 2024 European elections, it won 9.3% of the vote, electing two MEPs to the European Parliament.

Overall, we believe that our Party’s capacity and preparedness concerns both its strategic programmatic readiness and its current organizational policy and action in today’s conditions, in an unbroken unity.

A crucial issue is combining our revolutionary programme with daily revolutionary action in all spheres and at every stage of political guidance work. After all, even in a non-revolutionary situation such as the current one, we must carry out revolutionary work in preparation for the future.

We are struggling to convince an increasing number of workers in both the private and public sectors, as well as the broader popular strata, to break free from bourgeois ideology and all its variants (liberal, social democratic, etc.), opportunism and all bourgeois parties, regardless of their guise, and to intensify and strengthen their struggles, demands, strikes and demonstrations with all their might. We must strengthen the revolutionary movement without sparing any sacrifices or limits to our contribution and organize long-term, persistent preparation.

The Party’s overall assessment of its progress, and that of its guiding organs, cadres and members, is based on whether our political guidance work corresponds to the Party’s revolutionary character, as defined in its programme and statutes. This is an issue that must be reaffirmed at every Congress, enriched with developments and the generalization of the experience of class struggle. While the positive steps taken in many areas of our activity are undoubtedly valuable, we must not allow ourselves to overlook weaknesses, gaps and shortcomings in order to bring the entire Party into full alignment with our revolutionary programme.

The question that arises and must be constantly on our minds is how the vanguard, revolutionary character of the Party is achieved in practice and within the Party’s functioning. We focus on the functioning of the Party Base Organizations because it is at this level that all weaknesses in political guidance are expressed. The readiness, ability, will, and selfless work of every communist, wherever they may be and whatever the circumstances, are general, mandatory, and uniform features. It is essential that communists emerge as popular leaders in their neighbourhoods, workplaces and schools, making their mark everywhere, and being ready to face any difficulty.

Consequently, the Party’s daily work requires a qualitatively better organization. We must engage with the hundreds of thousands of workers, poor farmers and self-employed in the city who are affected by the capitalist system and the hardships of war, exploitation, heavy taxation and many other issues that they cannot overcome without overthrowing the bourgeoisie and establishing workers’ power. We must explain this simply and clearly to the broader masses, to the millions of people. We must talk about and promote the characteristics of the socialist society that we are planning to build and start discussing and preparing them today. We must prepare the vanguard, the working class and allied popular forces to gain experience in the harsh conflicts of class struggle.

The first major battle after the Festival is the national general strike on Wednesday, 1 October, against the government’s monstrous legislation allowing a 13-hour working day for the same employer, demanding the withdrawal of the bill, wage increases, collective bargaining agreements, health and safety measures in the workplace, an end to heavy taxation, and a reduction in working hours to 7 hours a day, 5 days a week (35 hours a week in total).

Health professionals across the country and the self-employed in cities are also in turmoil.

Farmers are also mobilizing, setting up roadblocks with their tractors on national and provincial roads.

University and school students, teachers and professors are also preparing to take to the streets to protest against the government’s anti-education policies.

The decay of the system is apparent in every aspect. The government and the state, the bourgeois parties as a whole, are mired in scandals and corruption, causing great anger and organized reactions among the people that are met with repression, persecution, and the use of blind bourgeois justice.

We are approaching this situation with militancy, optimism, and uplift. We are confident that we will succeed. We are marching forward!

We welcome you all once again and hope you have a wonderful and fruitful time at the Festival of KNE–“Odigitis”.

After all, we know how to both FIGHT and SING!

We wish everyone strength!